TU well represented at Innovator of the Year awards

Tandy Community Supercomputer recognized as outstanding model of business innovation by Journal-Record

Oklahoma Innovation Institute (OII) won overall Innovator of the Year for its implementation of the Tandy Community Supercomputer at the Journal Record’s annual event held Wednesday, April 23, 2014, in Oklahoma City. David Greer, executive director of The University of Tulsa’s Institute for Information Security, and George Louthan (BS ’09, MS ’11), computer scientist and director of the Tandy Supercomputing Center, accepted the award on behalf of OII.

The supercomputer, nicknamed Tandy, was installed in Tulsa’s City Hall in May 2013 and provides high performance computing that enables companies and researchers to process large amounts data at significantly higher rates than an average computer. As a community supercomputer, Tandy is available for use by private and public companies as well as researchers and schools in the Tulsa community.

Businesses, academic institutions or researchers can purchase a node, or computational building block, for $10,000 plus an annual maintenance fee of $2,500 per node. The fees also go toward upgrades that will continue to expand Tandy’s computing power.

Community access to Tandy and its capacity for continued expansion and upgrades distinguish Tulsa’s supercomputer from those established in other locations.

Also recognized during the awards ceremony was Synercon Technologies, a company that collects crash data in heavy trucks and shares it with insurance companies and vehicle manufacturers in efforts to advance safety standards of auto manufacturers. While collecting this data has historically been a complicated and costly process, Synercon uses technology licensed through TU to create a more efficient process. Jeremy Daily, founder and CEO of Synercon, is also an associate professor of mechanical engineering at TU.